Advice on media organization

[fender4645]

Hi all. I need some advice on how to do some media organization. I have 500+ movies that I've recently converted to h.264 format. These movies are served out/used in a few different ways (pyTivo, Air Video, iTunes, etc.) Because the movies are multi-purpose, I would prefer to keep them outside of the iTunes library as I have them specifically categorized in a folder/file hierarchy.

So my question is what's the best way to have video outside of the iTunes library but still be referenced inside of iTunes? (for synchronization to iPad and iPhone). Is this possible? Bonus points if there's a way for iTunes to automatically pick up new movies that are put into the source directory.

Thanks for the help!

 

[GermanSuplex]

You will have to test this, but if you uncheck iTunes' "organize" and "copy" boxes in the settings, can you move your folders to the "Automatically Add To iTunes" folder and store your library of movies there?

Otherwise, you'll just have to keep them where they are and untick those two checkboxes before importing your movies to iTunes.

Now, with that said, even though you've made it clear what you want to do, I still have to throw out there that iTunes organizing is dead-simple. I simply have Air Video set to share my iTunes Media folder, and all of my data is there, neatly organized. Movies by title, TV shows in Show > Season folders... I can't understand why anyone would NOT want iTunes organizing their media. Granted, everyone's situation is unique, and for instance if someone was pressed for space and needed their media spread across more than one drive, or absolutely needs their media in a certain structure for other programs to correctly access it, that's understandable, but any program that forces me to use a certain folder structure for my media isn't worth having, imho./end rant.

 

[fender4645]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I was figuring the only way was to manually manage the library (i.e. uncheck the organize and copy options). The reason why I don't want to use the iTunes folder structure is that it will throw all my movies into a single directory. 70% of time, I'm using Tivo/pyTivo to watch these videos and if they were all in a flat directory, it would take a _very_ long time to scroll to the one I want (I currently have the broken down via genre). Also, I want to share the videos between two different iTunes libraries on the same computer (mine and my wife's).

 

[GermanSuplex]

Actually, iTunes now puts the movie in it's own folder under the Movies folder. It doesn't just throw every movie I own in one single folder (though I think it used to). With iTunes 9, iTunes switched to a different folder structure. Your iTunes Music folder is now called "iTunes Media". Under that folder, you have subfolders for media types: Music, TV Shows, Movies, Podcasts, Audiobooks, etc.

For your movies, iTunes places each movie in it's own folder in the Movies folder. So if I open up the movie folder, I have a folder for The Godfather, a folder for The Godfather II , and a folder for The Godfather III, with the mp4 being in their respective folder. If you already understand this, my apologies, but if you used iTunes old way of sorting and never upgraded, it may not be known to some people, since you have to tell iTunes to upgrade to this new way of sorting. My list of videos load ultra-fast on Air Video on the iPad, even over 3G, I suspect this is because of the way iTunes puts the movies in their individual folders.

TV sorting is improved as well, since it places TV shows in season folders under the main show folder.

If you need to keep your custom sorting though, you may be able to try unselecting the "copy" and "organize" folders in iTunes, importing your movies to iTunes, then turn on the "copy" folder while leaving the organize button unchecked.

 

[Joneswilliamsc]

As I don't know more about importing music but here is some ways how I am doing it. I am moving movie to its own folder. Giving the perfect name to the folder. Then I use Media Companion to scrape all the movies. This produces very good results.